Fuckup Nights, a new event series which highlights founders and their business failure stories is launching its first Luxembourgish edition on July 4. Co-founder and entrepreneur Guillaume Chatelain tells us more.
What is the idea behind the new event series Fuckup Nights?
The principle of these Fuckup Nights events is to highlight entrepreneurs who have launched their concepts but unfortunately failed. Failure is often seen as a taboo, something to hide and not necessarily look back on. However, we learn much more from failures than from successes. The goal of these ‘fuck-up nights’ is to value these experiences, see if we can draw lessons from them, and learn more.
What format will the event take?
Each entrepreneur will tell us about his venture and journey for around 15 to 20 min. There will be some animations and quizzes about their personality, and we will have some interactions with the audience, and at the end a cocktail. We expect the event to feel a bit like a show.
This type of event will take place quarterly, aiming to invite three entrepreneurs, not necessarily those who have created startups, but to share their testimonies. This type of event is open to all kinds of audiences, and we hope to have a lot of exchanges with the audience, interactions, and also encourage people to take the plunge when they have ideas, to realise that failure is not so dramatic and that we can all undertake as it is part of life.
Who is the main audience and what do you hope they take away from the event?
The audience is open to all public, should they be workers, CEOs or workers who somehow feel a connection to the toughness of business, and also the challenge of working in a team where not everyone shares the same point of view or interests. We are aiming at receiving curious minds, also people who created ventures but still are fearing to talk – failure is subject to some self-censorship, and not everyone is open orA fit to look back on these situations.
When are you hosting the event and which speakers will be attending?
You can find our speakers, including Ilana Devillers from F4A, on our website as all confirmed their participation. We will organize our event on July 4 at 7.30 pm at the Altrimenti Cultural Center.
How have your personal experiences shaped your motivation to organise this event?
The motivation to do it was partly because I’ve already been in this case 3 times since I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2018, and with Arnaud Baudet (who’s co-organizing the events with me) we realised that such an event hadn’t taken place in quite some time.
Luxembourg is not known for being keen on taking risks, perhaps because of this ‘little village’ effect where everyone knows each other and sometimes cannot speak openly. We felt the need to give the entrepreneurs a platform to voice their experiences, as most of them are fascinating. After all, we are experiencing failures in some aspects of our lives, this is human and can resonate with every one of us.
